Tim Eyman restarts his war on Sound Transit — this time, he claims, with seed money

Dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman declared this morn­ing that he’s ready to have anoth­er go at whack­ing Sound Tran­sit and WSDOT’s Amtrak Cas­cades, exu­ber­ant­ly telling his fol­low­ers that he’s launch­ing an ini­tia­tive to slash vehi­cle fees to thir­ty dol­lars and deprive Wash­ing­ton of bil­lions of dol­lars in tran­sit funding.

I‑976 is a mea­sure to the 2019 Leg­is­la­ture, not to the peo­ple for 2018, so it won’t appear on this Novem­ber’s bal­lot. The sig­na­ture dead­line is in late December.

“Yup, that’s right. We’re off and run­ning to get the required num­ber of sig­na­tures to get Ini­tia­tive 976 on the bal­lot,” wrote Eyman, who recent­ly announced that he would try to qual­i­fy an unre­lat­ed mea­sure, Ini­tia­tive 977, for 2019.

I‑977 sought apply the Pub­lic Records Act, as cur­rent­ly writ­ten, to the Wash­ing­ton State House and Sen­ate, which have his­tor­i­cal­ly assert­ed they’re exempt.

It appears I‑977 has already been aban­doned after less than two weeks, which has to be a new record (usu­al­ly, Eyman’s time-to-fail is mea­sured in months, not days).

What accounts for the sud­den change in plans? In a word, mon­ey. What else?

Eyman tried twice in 2016 to force a vote on gut­ting fund­ing for Sound Tran­sit and Amtrak Cas­cades. Both times, he failed. Then he tried again last year, invest­ing more time and ener­gy into his attempt. But he came up short, again.

I‑976 rep­re­sents his fourth attempt in three years to qualify.

“We failed to qual­i­fy… for a vote last year,” Eyman acknowl­edged in his mes­sage, not both­er­ing to men­tion the two 2016 attempts that pre­ced­ed that failure.

“There’s two rea­sons we fell short: 1) We need­ed more time. 2) We need­ed a whole lot more mon­ey to hire paid peti­tion­ers to sup­ple­ment our volunteers.”

Actu­al­ly, all he need­ed was that money.

With enough mon­ey, it’s pos­si­ble to get any­thing on the bal­lot with a quick mul­ti-week sig­na­ture dri­ve. Even an ini­tia­tive to ban that dan­ger­ous sub­stance dihy­dro­gen monox­ide — also known as, ahem, water — would be easy to qual­i­fy in Wash­ing­ton State. Though many local­ly-based peti­tion­ers won’t have any­thing to do with Eyman and are rea­son­ably dis­crim­i­nat­ing about who they will work for, out of state sig­na­ture gath­er­ers will hap­pi­ly car­ry peti­tions for an Eyman measure.

And Eyman is hap­py to bring them here.

Despite what Eyman says in the excerpt below, new­found access to mon­ey is the only rea­son why it makes sense to reat­tempt a mea­sure that has already failed to qual­i­fy three times, and hasti­ly aban­don the plan to go ahead with I‑977.

There’s two rea­sons why we’re try­ing again this year:

1. We have more time. Last year, we start­ed in mid-July — this time we’re start­ing in mid-April. That’s an extra 3 months. So for I‑976, we have from now until the end of Decem­ber to col­lect the 350,000 sig­na­tures need­ed — that’s 8 full months start­ing now.
2. We already have half the mon­ey we need, but it’s absolute­ly crit­i­cal that we raise the oth­er half as soon as pos­si­ble. Hav­ing $500,000 at the begin­ning of the sig­na­ture dri­ve for I‑976 allows us to hire paid peti­tion­ers right away (they were actu­al­ly out col­lect­ing sig­na­tures over the week­end). But to keep them out there, we got­ta raise anoth­er $500,000 as soon as possible.

LET US BE CLEAR: we still want our vol­un­teers to col­lect sig­na­tures because every sig­na­ture you col­lect is one less sig­na­ture we have to pay a pro­fes­sion­al to get. But we did­n’t make it last year with just our vol­un­teers. We fell short. So we need pro­fes­sion­al peti­tion­ers and that requires rais­ing a lot of money.

On Fri­day morn­ing, the paid peti­tion­ing guys picked up 20,000 peti­tions from a local print­er to get started.

If Eyman’s claim of hav­ing half a mil­lion dol­lars in seed mon­ey isn’t a fab­ri­ca­tion, then he is on his way to restart­ing his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry with I‑976, despite fac­ing four law­suits from the State of Wash­ing­ton for pub­lic dis­clo­sure law violations.

Eyman’s recent fundrais­ing from small dol­lar donors has been absolute­ly ane­mic, so the $500,000 he claims to have (if he real­ly has it) would have to have come from a wealthy bene­fac­tor. In the past, Eyman has received huge sums for his schemes from whales such as invest­ment banker Michael Dun­mire (now deceased), Belle­vue Col­lec­tion own­er Kem­per Free­man, Jr. (who also despis­es Sound Tran­sit), real estate devel­op­er Clyde Hol­land, and hedge fund man­ag­er Ken­neth Fisher.

Eyman said noth­ing about the source of his mon­ey in today’s email. Pub­lic dis­clo­sure law requires that Eyman iden­ti­fy who his bene­fac­tor is with­in sev­er­al weeks so that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans can know who’s try­ing to influ­ence their vote (or obtain their sig­na­ture), so Eyman won’t be able to keep the source of his mon­ey a secret for very long. Unless he brazen­ly vio­lates the law again, that is.

It’s a shame to think that some­one has once again made the mis­take of entrust­ing Eyman with a lot of mon­ey. He has proved time and again that he can’t be trust­ed with mon­ey. But some peo­ple, as we have been remind­ed a lot recent­ly, nev­er learn.

At NPI, we know the price of progress is eter­nal vig­i­lance, which is why we main­tain a project called Per­ma­nent Defense. To have the high­est chance of suc­cess, an oppo­si­tion cam­paign to a destruc­tive Eyman ini­tia­tive must start imme­di­ate­ly. Today, there­fore, is the first day of the NO on I‑976 cam­paign. We will be work­ing hard to assem­ble a broad coali­tion to pro­tect our vot­er-approved tran­sit projects and invest­ments in free­dom of mobil­i­ty, which ben­e­fit com­mu­ni­ties across our state.

If you encounter a peti­tion­er who asks you to sign I‑976, please report your encounter to us imme­di­ate­ly through our Per­ma­nent Defense project.